


Meditations on Becoming

by captain_trashmouth



Series: Becoming [2]
Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Coping, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Introspection, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Other, POV Lio Fotia, Self-Acceptance, Self-Discovery, Self-Doubt, Self-Reflection, The author uses headcanons as a coping mechanism, Trans Character, learning to cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:22:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23112391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captain_trashmouth/pseuds/captain_trashmouth
Summary: How does one put words to what it feels like to contain multitudes?How do you describe the taste of the stars you’ve swallowed to someone that has never even seen a night sky?
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Series: Becoming [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1661308
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47





	Meditations on Becoming

**Author's Note:**

> One of the things that drew me to Promare so strongly in the beginning was the extreme nb vibes that I got from Lio. I spend a lot of time thinking about Lio and what it must be like to learn how to be a person again after being both a criminal and a weapon for so long. I like to think this is part of that Becoming process. This piece takes place after and alongside the latter events of A Hundred Paper Cranes.
> 
> I am a non-binary person that still struggles with gender identity issues, and I wrote this from a perspective similar to my own. If anything I have written here comes across as insensitive, please know that it was not intentional.
> 
> As always, I highly value your comments and kudos. They mean a lot to me, as does your continued readership. Love to all of you.
> 
> \- cap

Being allowed to be a person comes with its own ugly truths, he finds, in the days after everything is burned for the second time. When the smoke clears and the ash settles to kiss the scars that still lace the ground, he’s still left there just as he was before. The world saw fit to give him one body, one body that the word ‘he’ feels too small to describe. How does one put words to what it feels like to contain multitudes? How do you describe the taste of the stars you’ve swallowed to someone that has never even seen a night sky? When he looks at his body in the mirror, he feels nothing but mismatch. This body, this flesh, was a gift he did not ask for, chosen for him with only the packaging in mind. There is no love there, no attachment. His body is just dirty clothes and skin stretched taut over ribs that try to fight their way out of his chest. He tries to cover it up, to keep on going in the way that he always has but nothing he tries on fits right. His world becomes a stage, a window display, an empty dressing room littered with all of the ill-fitting articles that others have tried to force him to wear. 

What would it be like to shed it all? To strip off all his skin and leave it behind like the baggage that it is? Sometimes, he wants to pick at the seams until his fingers bleed, until the thread withers away into nothing, leaving behind empty puncture holes that no longer attach flesh to bone. He wants to let that outer coating, for that is what it is, of flesh peel away from what lies beneath until he can walk around in the pinkish-white of his still living bones. He wonders what it is like to be allowed to just... be. For once, for a moment, he wants to just be. It sounds like something so simple, to simply exist in a vacuum but nothing in his life has ever been simple and nothing about him as a person has ever been easy. He thinks about words often, now that he has time to savor each one, to let it dissolve on his tongue until he understands what is held secreted away in the middle of the candy coating. He has time to do that now, he has the bandwidth now to think about such things and he realizes that ‘he’ will always be too small of a word for what it means to exist in this body. It’s not accurate, and he forces down the lump in his throat as he realizes that it never will be. He peels the label off and crumples it to the floor. It lays there on the ground, cast aside like so much refuse. 

The first time that he takes a sip from the bottle called ‘they’, it tastes like belonging. It tastes like what they can only imagine rightness should taste like. They hold it in their mouth for as long as they can, treasuring the taste of what they can only imagine is something fleeting. It feels like too much to ask for, this resounding click, this kind of ‘yes’. ‘They’ is accompanied by the sound of ancient machinery coming to life after a long time at rest. Electricity flows through them in the way that fire used to, they’ve never felt such correctness before, and Christ, they want to feel it again. It becomes a quiet craving, another kind of whispering decay as they let themself become ‘he’ again. It becomes a hungry thing, chewing and gnawing, refusing to be ignored. It breaks its teeth against the bars of its cage, and Lio knows that one day, it will break free. As they return from ‘they’ to ‘he’, they rise out of the warm current of that water and bare themself to the bitter wind again. They lie awake at night, he lies awake at night, next to his/their lover and feel bereft. How do you tell someone that you are not the person that they thought you were? It was not a lie, as this was likely what they had always been but did not have a way to name, but it still felt like a deception. It triggered that static buzz of fear that rasped at the back of their neck like a parasite. It whispered about not being enough, about how no matter what they did, no matter what he did, he would always be a fake. A pretender wearing a costume. A child playing dress up. Still, the blood was already in the water and the scent of it had spread. They wanted it, they wanted to drink it all up until they drowned in it and yet the question lingered: How do you look your lover in the face and say, “This is who I really am”?

One night when they are tangled up together sweat-slick and lying prone on the love-stained sheets of their shared mattress, he breathes it into life. No. Not ‘he’ anymore, no, _they_ say this aloud and oh, no. Oh god, the words come out before they can stop themself. Into the dark of their shared bedroom, they speak it into reality, soft and hesitant. It hangs in the air like skywriting, stays there like a love bite on pale skin. There it is, voiced aloud, small and scared, but it’s been said, and it can never be shoved back into their drooling mouth. They would choke on the words if they could, shovel them back into their mouth and let their sharp edges cut their throat on the way down as they swallowed them down into their stomach. They would let themself live with those rotting words, with that sour sadness in the pit of their belly for so long if they could wipe away the shocked, horrified look on their lover’s face. But oh, _oh_ , the universe is full of such surprises. The horror they beheld was not horror, but sorrow on their behalf. 

Hearing the question “Do you still want to be called Lio?” feels like a thousand doors opening at once. It feels like wiping away the grime on a wall, only to find out that it is a window. It feels like yanking down the stage curtain that they had been caught beneath and now, free of its weight, they can stand up. They can stand up proud and tall and say, “This is who I am.” This must be what it feels like as crystals form, to arrange yourself into something beautiful and correct and natural. This is what it feels like to be known. To be loved. To be seen. The first time they hear the words, “This is Lio. They’re my partner,” it hits like a sledgehammer. Their heart flits around like a hummingbird, settling only in the caring cup of their lover’s hands. That is a safe place. That is a home that they can live in. Their body is now a home that they can live in. It was not always like this. It needed renovation and care, like all things do.

But God, how sweet it is to feel real.


End file.
